The Collected Letters, Volume 25

Dear Brother,—Your Note did come on Saturday night; many thanks to you,—and send us another so soon as you can! Here is the Hudson's Statue, a very bad Pamphlet; but the best my biliary and other demons wd allow to make it; and now happily the last save one: that is the beautiful property of it! These two days I have sat over Jesuitism (or yesterday I fairly gave up sitting, and took to lying on the sofa, and reading): I do not remember that for many years
I have been in worse case for writing. Nevertheless I will do it; as our brave Father used to say, “I will gar mysel do it!” Nay it will be much easier if I were once fairly into it. Rightly done [it] cannot by any method be just now: it is but the beginning of a boundless subject.

On Saturday evening there occurred a thing which I doubt will prove a national tragedy,—for the death of Sir R. Peel at present would be that! Have you heard of it? He was riding up Constitution Hill1 on a new young horse; a prancing horse and groom ca[me] by; Peel's horse pranced and sh[ied] [f]lung up its heels; the poor rider fell on his head over its ears, and somehow pulled [it d]own upon him: he lies in great danger ever since; collar-bone &c were broken, the new h[at] was all broken and crushed; the fear is of the head;—today, the postman tells us, the bulleti[n] is, “Had a bad night, and is worse!” Everybody is in great anxiety: Chorley & I went up yesterday, to gather tidings; all
the back space in Whitehall was swarming with carriages & footfolk: ay de mi, I fear the worst, and it makes me really sad.

Last night I had to go to W. Stirling,—to tea only; tea near midnight! Plenty of waxlights, cigars and magnificence; but a class of human
creatures and human talk & thot that filled me with loathing!— Oh take care of my Mother! Blessings with you all.

T. Carlyle

n.b. I don't believe it was Alison that wrote that stuff in Blackwood.2 He was at Stirling's last night, and looked decidedly like a friendly man, and above brutalities of any kind.— — Lehwald, Terrot3 &c &c the whole world seems to have given itself rendezvous down stairs: an intrusive mortal is expected here too. Eheu!—

1. On Fri., 28 June, Peel spoke for the last time in the House of Commons. The accident occurred Sat., 29 June. Peel d. at his home in Whitehall Gardens, Tues. night, 2 July. For TC's fuller account of Peel's accident and death, see Froude, Carlyle 4:47–49. TC wrote in his Journal, 24 July: “How much has passed in the four or five weeks since the last entry was written! Sir R. Peel is dead; a noticeable loss to me, and to England perhaps an incalculable one at this moment. It is for the purpose of recording that
event that I have taken pen this morning.”

2. The article attacking TC and the Latter-Day Pamphlets, 1–4, Blackwood's Magazine 67 (June 1850):641–58, was written not by Archibald Alison, but by William Edmonstoune Aytoun.